Tag Archives | Hypocrisy

In a blistering interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Piketty [the famed French economist and author of the best-seller, Capital in the Twenty‑First Century] blasts Germany and it’s history of repayment of debt over the years, and it’s attitudes toward its fellow EU neighbor, Greece. In brief, he tells the interviewer in no uncertain terms that Germany never repaid their loans; yet they hold others to a higher standard of responsibility.

ZEIT: But shouldn’t they repay their debts?

Piketty: My book recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them.

Over the weekend, the US government announced that special forces soldiers entered Syria to conduct a raid that killed an alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials leaked classified information to the New York Times that’s much more sensitive than anything Edward Snowden ever revealed, and it serves as a prime example of the government’s hypocrisy when it comes to disclosures of secret information.

The raid came after weeks of surveillance of Abu Sayyaf, using information gleaned from a small but growing network of informants the C.I.A. and the Pentagon have painstakingly developed in Syria, as well as satellite imagery, drone reconnaissance and electronic eavesdropping, American officials said. The White House rejected initial reports from the region that attributed the raid to the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

This post was originally published on Common Dreams. See more of Lauren’s posts here.

A federal court in Alexandria, Virginia sentenced former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling to three and a half years in prison on Monday in a case that has received widespread condemnation for revealing the “rank hypocrisy” of the U.S. government’s war on whistleblowers.

In January, a jury convicted Sterling of violating the Espionage Act and leaking classified information to New York Times journalist James Risen about a botched CIA mission to provide flawed nuclear plans to Iran, known as “Operation Merlin.” He was found guilty of nine charges against him and faced as many as 24 years behind bars.

Risen refused to testify against Sterling and many say that the former intelligence official was convicted merely on circumstantial evidence.

Ahead of the sentencing, Sterling’s attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to reconsider the proposed terms, arguing that former CIA director and retired general David Petraeus was given a plea deal and shown great leniency despite comparable charges.… Read the rest

We cannot improve on history by blindly revering any individual, document, or event. We can learn a lot from the Founders, both from what they got right AND from what they got wrong. And we can do better than they did.

I have a feeling that a few of these might be the work of pranksters, but according to Addicting Info, the Casual Encounters section of internet want-ad page CraigsList get busy during CPAC. Apparently there are a lot of conservatives in town looking for some no-strings-attached play on the side.

Okay.
So. I spend so much time in rural Indiana, CPAC is my only outlet for this sort of thing.
What I’m looking for, you, a masculine Ayn Rand, me, the 47%. And I want you to slap me around hard and give it to me good.
Or. . .you could bust in my room, catch me trying to enroll in a healthcare market place/state exchange, and the punish me for it. Punish me good.
We can meet at the bar first, if you want.

The way in which we think, act, feel and live is wrought with self-denial, contradiction and inconsistency. In a recent piece, I highlighted how various logical fallacies work as psychological flaws that twist and distort our decision-making abilities, making it virtually impossible for someone to make a truly unbiased and impartial choice about anything.

What’s more, because so much of our thought processes are subconscious, our internal contradictions and irregularities rarely register at a more conscious level. And thus our unwillingness to realize this means we tend to think everyone is a hypocrite but us.

According to Why Everyone (Else) Is A Hypocrite, by evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban, the reason we seem unwilling to make an effort to realize our inherent irrationalities is because in Western society, a flattering self-image is directly correlated with personal rewards such as greater senses of emotional stability, motivation and perseverance.

When you express yourself you are highly likely to express your “self”.

Recently I was in a very crowded pub where I watched a woman pushing a man around, she had him by the collar of his shirt and was shouting “you’re pushing people you’re drunk, you’re knocking people over, you’re being a dickhead”. She appeared very drunk as she pushed him into the crowd of people behind him and started knocking people over as a consequence. Almost to the word, each of her criticisms applied to her as equally as they might have him. His only response was to try and laugh it off but the woman, who I’m not sure he knew, then stormed off furious at the man’s response shouting “I fucking hate people like you, you’ve no consideration for other people, you never listen to what they say!”. There, with almost perfect symmetry, was the idea I’m about to try and explain with this blog entry.… Read the rest

A Tea Party candidate for Idaho’s House of Representatives defended himself against allegations of hypocrisy following an NBC News article in which he admitted to signing his entire family up for Medicaid while running on a platform that calls for the dismantling of all government programs.

Collett, a self-employed software developer by trade, went on to note that his ten children — two biological, eight adopted — are all recipients of health insurance through the government’s Medicaid program, and acknowledged that “there are a lot of people out there that’ll cry foul” over the dissonance.

And, indeed, many people did visit Collett’s personal site shortly afterward to ask him what the hell.

Abby Martin speaks about the blatant hypocrisy regarding Obama’s “red line” of chemical attacks as the motivating factor to intervene militarily in Syria, citing the top four chemical weapons attacks that the US military does not want you to know about.

Clare Daly, TD Dublin North recently spoke clearly about how she views The United States President, Barack Obama. via Global Research

Now, I ask you, is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award? Because we have to call things by their right names, and the reality is that by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal.

He has just announced his decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition, including the jihadists, fueling the destabilization of that region and continuing to undermine secularism and knock back conditions for women.” (Clare Daly)

TRANSCRIPT

“It is important to take this opportunity to bring some balance into the discussion surrounding the visit of the U.S. president and his wife, given the almost unprecedented slobbering over them that the nation has been exposed to over the last number of days.

“It’s really hard to know which is worse, whether it’s the outpourings of the Obamas themselves or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and the political establishment.”

“We’ve had separate and special news bulletins by the State broadcaster to tell us what Michelle Obama and her daughters had for lunch in Dublin, but very little questioning of the fact that she was having lunch with Mr.